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A big big ring for a small person!

I bought this seat just after my daughter first birthday when the Boots one we had previously became too small and she exceeded the maximum weight allowance. I bought this in my local swimming pool where it cost me around £15.

I have this seat in a bright pink colour but I also seen an orange version for sale. It comes in 2 sizes for ages 3-12 months and 12-18 months.

This seat came in a simple plastic wrapper which I threw away once I had opened it.

The seat inflates in four sections, you need to inflate them individually and in order starting with the innermost valve, there are directions printed on the ring to help. It took quite a lot of effort to inflate this and I decided after doing it and feeling really dizzy and hot in the already sweltering changing room I would leave it inflated to take home.

The seat is made from a material described online as vylux, I am unsure what this is but the ring feels really well made and the material is thick and robust.

To use this seat you simply pop your child through the middle of the ring and put their legs through the seat that is build into the ring.

When we first started using this the ring drawfed my daughter and she could barely see over the top to look around the pool which she wasn't keen on. She did however like the fact that she could kick her legs and she also liked to rest her head on the seat rest as I pushed her around the pool.

One thing I will say about this ring is it is very big and if we went to the pool on a busy day it was a nightmare to navigate around.

I used this for a total of about 8 months before moving on to armbands and then a life jacket.

The only negative thing about this seat is the size, it is very good at keeping your child afloat in the pool but I found it so big compared to the earlier Boots version I had. In fact when we left the pool I struggled to get it in the car it wouldn't fit into my boot, I have a medium sized hatchback, I had to let the outer ring down and jam it into the boot. It is also a nightmare to carry to the pool in the wind trying to hold a baby and carry this with everything else is difficult particularly as my local pool is near the sea and very windy! I felt that I might take off!

I would give it 3 out of 5 as we did get our use out of it but I would have preferred to have bought another Boots one in a bigger size as they ring is square and a lot smaller but unfortunately at the time they didn't have the size I needed available.

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A great beginner seat

When my daughter was a baby, she absolutely hated the bath and this went on for quite a while, beyond the initial baby hating bath stage that all babies seem to go through. So, it was long time before we took her anywhere near the swimming pool - in fact she was over a year old when she went to the swimming pool for the first time, and we decided to purchase her a swimming seat so she would be happy in the water and feel secure with something around her when she was splashing about. So, we purchased this Zoggs trainer seat, which I picked up on amazon at the time. It currently retails at around a tenner, and although is it available in a couple of colours, we opted for the orange one like that above, so it would be suitable for any future children we have as well, girl or boy.

This seat is available in two different sizes - 3 to 12 months and 12 to 18 months. Given the age of our child when we first had her in the swimming pool, we opted for the older age group for the seat. However I would say that a baby probably from 9 months plus could safely sit in the bigger seat as well.

This inflatable trainer seat, comes with a little headrest to protect a young's child head and give added comfort. My husband had no problem either inflating this seat or deflating it when it was finished to make it easier to store.

Before we went to the swimming pool for the first time with our daughter, we let her step into the inflated seat at home in her swimsuit, so she would get used to something round her. She had fun, so we were confident that she would enjoy the pool experience. As soon as she got into the seat and was floating on the water she was happy. This seat kept her above the water line, so unless she got splashed, she could have come out of the water with her hair and face completely dry. She usually got splashed however, so she never did come out dry! We brought a ball with us and she was able to hold the ball on the sides of the seat, but she struggled to really reach the water, but at the baby stage, and for a first swim, this wasn't an issue.

The second and third time we took her to the swimming pool using this seat again demonstrated to us that although the seat is ideal for babies who are just getting used to the water, and there is no doubt that the seat is comfortable and secure, given we didn't have to hold our daughter up in the water at all, it does restrict a child as they get older. The second and third time we went to the pool there were toys out such as watering cans etc, and my daughter just loved this, but she didn't have the room with the seat to play with them in the water, and it was at this stage, when she was a bout 16/17 months old, that we decided we needed to look at the next option up, ie a swimming vest, so she could start to have fun in the water but still have the security of something around her.

All in all, this is an ideal way of introducing a baby or young child to the swimming pool. It provides them with a secure seat where you don't have to constantly hold them up, but you can push them around the pool and get them used to kicking their legs in the water. However, once a child gets confident in the water, this seat becomes rather restricting as they cannot easily play with the water or toys in the water, so at this point the seat isn't as valuable but I think it is definitely worth the money as a first swim seat to give a child confidence in the water. We took our daughter this weekend swimming with her swim vest for the first time, and she loved the freedom the vest gave her that the seat didn't, but my husband and I commented that we were very glad to have started with the trainer seat otherwise going to the swimming pool may not be the exciting experience it is currently to our daughter.

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A useful product, providing baby is willing to be put into it!

I didn't have much opportunity to take my youngest son swimming as a tiny baby so he was around nine months old by the time we first started taking swimming and, by that age, he was a little wary about the whole experience. I bought this Zoggs trainer seat hoping that my little one would feel more confident in the water if he was supported and able to kick his legs out freely. This Zoggs inflatable swim seat is pretty widely available with stockists including ELC and Argos and is available in two sizes - 3-12 months and 12-18 months. I paid £14.99 from Argos, which is the average price. I've used Zoggs swim products before, including armbands and swimming caps, and have always found them to be excellent quality so I was confident that this would be good value for money.

The swim seat is basically a large inflatable ring with a built-in seat section (similar to the design used inside sit-in baby walkers) to support baby in an upright position in the water. There is also a 'pillow' behind the child although I found that this is too far away from the baby to actually offer any physical support at all. What the back support does do, however, is provide a little bit of shelter from other children splashing nearby, which is helpful if baby is scared of splashing as mine was (and still is.) The PVC material itself is of excellent quality. It is incredibly thick and durable and all of the seams are very strongly reinforced, so this should be unlikely to break or puncture during normal use.

When originally purchased, this came in a tiny little box. Once the seat has been taken out it's physically impossible to fold it down small enough to get it back in that box however! On our initial use, I decided to transport the seat in its un-inflated state - thinking that it would be easier to carry about and hadn't had the foresight to practice blowing this up before first use. I soon discovered this was a mistake as the seat has four separate 'chambers', each of which needs to be inflated separately. Once fully inflated, the seat is actually quite large and takes a lot of blowing up to get this set up! I've felt faint before now trying to inflate it! That first attempt was a bit of a disaster as, by the time my husband was halfway through blowing it up, my little one was already hysterical and had enough of swimming altogether so I'd certainly recommend having this ready inflated, particularly if baby is already scared of swimming and likely to have very little time in the water. This does mean carting the inflated ring about with you, which is pretty bulky, but, as you'd expect, it is also very lightweight. After use, deflating all of the four sections is also pretty time consuming. Each section has its own individual valve and it takes some squishing and squeezing to get this totally free of air. The benefit of all those chambers (and all that blowing) is that the ring is never likely to deflate accidentally.

After our first disastrous experience, the next couple of attempts were not much more successful, despite advance preparation. The seat was a good fit for my son at the time who was well within the recommended age range and well under the 11kg maximum weight limit for the smaller seat. It still requires baby's co-operation to get them into position, as their legs need to go into the correct space within the ring, which can be a little tricky once fully inflated. My little one was never particularly keen on getting into this at all and it ended up becoming much more stressful trying to get him into his seat than the swimming experience itself. In the end, after a few miserable swimming sessions, we abandoned the trainer seat altogether and found that my son was much happier just being held in the water with armbands instead.

I've got no doubt that the trainer seat is ideal for some babies. I've seen plenty of other babies and toddlers floating around happily in these at the local pool and they seem excited to have their arms and legs free to splash around in the water. They also free up parents a little, particularly if they have other young children to supervise too, which is exactly why I thought that this would be a good idea. Sadly, my little one had other ideas and refused to co-operate meaning that this seat had relatively little use for us. I would still feel confident about recommending this as the quality of the product is excellent (despite the effort needed to inflate and deflate it.) I suspect that it would be far easier and more successful to introduce baby to this at a much younger age and that, with hindsight, is what I would have done too.

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The Zoggs trainer seat is a great way to get your little one used to being in the water. With a safe and comfortable seat and pillow back support, your baby will feel safe and protected whilst still being able to move his arms and legs around freely. Age range: From 1 year.